Hi,What do you think about this new table(they sell it as a new principle)?I was reading the Ad on the online Hocus pocus shop,I was shocked that no one mentioned Lubor Fiedler the inventor of this system (in fact the system is called Lubor 's l... he used this system so many times and Tenyo sold his clever miracles)On the AD this system this table is sold like a new system...It's only a bigger" Tenyo/Fiedler 4D surprise " c'mon..Tenyo Company is not complaining about this Ripp off?unbelivable ! How this can be?Some one should tell to Tenyo Company, I belive now Tenyo own this Lubor's Patents .... and all the guys who wrote a rewiew really don't mind about Fiedler and Tenyo patents?

What do you think guys?For me it's unbelivable and a shame.Sorry .AndThanksFabricemagic

Yes it is a shame that the name Lubor Fiedler is not mentioned anywhere. This of course uses his Lubor Lens method. I don't know if Lubor or Tenyo protected this invention with a patent but at the very least the creators should credit Lubor Fiedler for discovering the underlying method used.

Hi Chris,Shure Lubor had a patent on that specific system (it's very easy to find online) and he patented also others things.For shure Tenyo also patented his items,I 've been told that now Tenyo own the Lubor's patents.I can't belive......a genius like Lubor Fiedler even not mentioned and not credited....thumb down .

Are you sure? It looks like it was awarded in 2003, so it should be in effect until 2023. (and it is assigned to Mark Setteducati, not to Tenyo.)

Bill, just study a bit more carefully that patent page. It says: "Legal status: expired". A patent is not by default valid for 20 years. After the 4th year you have to make additional maintenance payments which continue to increase. I am assuming these payments have not been made.

And if you hover your cursor over that statement, a pop-up appears which says "The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed."

So Google doesn't stand by their own statement.

But the USPTO database does seem to say it has expired. It also, however, mentions situations where fees on an expired patent may be paid and the patent brought back into "current" status.

Regardless, whether or not a patent applies or is otherwise in force is a legal question, and is best answered by paying a lawyer.

(and it looks like the 20 year period starts on the filing date, not the issue date, so it may be covered until 2022, not 2023.)

As to whether or not CS should credit Fiedler, it would be nice if they did. And maybe they do in whatever paperwork comes with a purchased illusion. But I don't think it's generally required, or even customary, for advertisements for new magic effects to list the predecessors in the ads themselves.

It is safe to say the patent on this has been abandoned and expired - according to the records it's almost 10 years since the patent owners or their agents actually had any interaction with the patent office about this patent and multiple reminders and deadlines have passed on it so clearly the owners have no interest in reasserting their rights in it.

As others have said this is more of an ethical issue on CS's part - clearly Lubor Lens was a major inspiration for their product though in the interests of completeness i have to point out that Lubor wasn't the first person to invent this optical technique/methodology - there are others with similar methods and ideas so whilst Lubor made some innovations and adjustments that were worthy of a patent not every invention that uses this method is necessarily copying his work directly as broadly similar inventions exist in advertising devices and 3D autostereoscopic screens - even though in this instance they were clearly influenced by him.

Tom Moore wrote:...I have to point out that Lubor wasn't the first person to invent this optical technique/methodology - there are others with similar methods and ideas ...

I think this is up for debate. A few years ago I spoke with Lubor about how he discovered the Lubor Lens. I don't have any documents to proof anything, but I remember that Lubor told me that his idea goes back to the early 1960s. I do believe him, because in an issue of the 1963 Zauberkunst, the former East German magic magazine, available here https://www.lybrary.com/zauberkunst-09- ... 30606.html , Lubor does have an idea which could be considered a precursor to his lens. At least it documents that he was thinking about lenses differently than most. Eventually this developed into his Lubor Lens when he found the right material by accident at an industry exhibition.

What other invention did you have in mind when you wrote that he wasn't the first person to use this technique?

First and second generation Autostereoscopic 3D (that's tv and movie screens that enable you to see 3D without wearing any glasses or a headset) all use a lenticular / linear lens system in a similar way to lubor lens (taking a beam of light and bending/shifting in 1 plane whilst giving the impression it's coming straight at the viewer) all be it in almost exactly the opposite direction to the LL.Simple lenticular animation / psudo holograms used in advertising displays use a very similar system.There's a wealth of work on refractive properties of materials and how they can be used to bend the light passing through them in ways that make it go "around" concealed object - admittedly almost all the work in this field is in the refractive properties of liquids but the policy is the same.There's some interesting work hidden in patent archives for mirror / polished surface in unusual curved shapes and configurations which again give the illusion of allowing a straight view but which in reality bend light slightly to mask an object.The recently much hyped "lost" Harbin invisible girl illusion is really also a very primitive version of the LL - huge plates of glass effectively acting as just 2 of the lenticular lenses whilst the LL is made of dozens of them and much smallerIt could even be argued that polorised sunglasses (and primative 3D glasses used in movie theatres) are a precursor to the LL as they use a lateral lens system to filter out all light except that in a very particular direction/dimension.

Again, not to play down Lubor's inventive genius and the genuine innovations he has made but i think a good comparison here is to the Cola industry. Coke didn't invent cola, lots of other companies made cola before and after coke was invented, utilising many of the same principles and ingredients so whilst Coke is the most famous and a unique combination of minute details just like the Lubor Lens it's also not right to assume that it is a completely unique and revolutionary product that came out of nowhere.

Tom, the lens system itself is certainly not new. After all Lubor found the material at an industry exhibition. So the material had clearly uses before Lubor released his Lubor lens. But I have not yet seen anybody use it to 'vanish' an object the way Lubor does. The light rays are not bent around the object. the image of the object is smeared out in one direction so that it practically vanishes. This is a completely different concept than the invisible man illusion, and is also completely different than all the systems you have mentioned. So it is not the lens system by itself, but how it is used and deployed that is the innovation here. And that idea I have not seen used anywhere else before Lubor released his ideas.

Tom Moore wrote:I'm also 99% sure that the "existing product" he used as his jump off point was the raw material used in one of the existing inventions I mentioned previously.

Lubor had the concept and idea many years before he found the material. Lubor told me that when he saw the material for the first time he immediately knew that it was the right material for his optical vanish concept he had worked on for many years prior. The fact that it is the same lens system also means that the optical paths are the same. That is simply an alternative description of the system. But the way Lubor deploys it, to optically smear out the image in one direction, is completely novel as far as I can tell. If you can point me to any literature where a similar lens system is used in similar ways I would appreciate it.

specifically using the technique in a magic trick almost identically & on a similar scale- there's none. But other technologies using this lens system to mask and reveal objects there's plenty. As i referenced before early generation autostereoscopic monitors that i played with a lot use EXACTLY the same lenticular array as the lubor lense does (all be it with a different focal length as 3D displays want all the image to be transmitted whilst LL specifically wants to emphases different parts of the image) and technically it is using the technique to hide an object since the view beamed to the left eye is hidden from the right eye and vis-versa by the lens system. It's essentially a LL used in almost perfect reverse. The early lenticular monitors are based on and evolved from lenticular principles that were more than 100 years ago.

Chris I'm whit you.It's unethically for shure and maybe also not right ( orherwise, nowdays all the cheap builders will be free to Ripp off the Steinmeyer's Origami illusion? Do you mean this ? I hope no.)The Tenyo 4D surprise it's not a so dated item, I 'm shure it's recorded and still peotected.Mr.Moore Lubor was the first using that System in that way (ceck on Sharpe Optical illusions book ,Sharpe talked about that technology used differently but not used in the Lubor's way,This mean that technology was knowed but not used as Lubor did.....and the Sharpe book it's very old compared whit the moment when Lubor sold on the market (also whit Tenyo) his miracoulos system.Thanks.Fabricemagic

I have now spent some time reviewing lenticular arrays to achieve autostereoscopy. I am sorry, but I don't agree at all that this is what Lubor Fiedler does, not even close. Hiding half the image from one eye is not at all what Lubor's Lens achieves. Yes, they use the same lens system, but the image plane in the autostereoscopy case has to be very close to the lens system, otherwise it doesn't work. In Lubor's case there has to be a significant distance otherwise it doesn't work. The vanishing/hiding mechanism is totally different.

In my own experience having invented and developed in several fields, not just magic (I have more than 10 patents to my credit and many other inventions not patented), it is very easy to trace back the steps after the invention has been made. Often people who do that feel the steps taken by the inventor were obvious. But before somebody has taken these steps they are not obvious at all. That is the nature of the creative process. It is very difficult to not only have a creative thought, but to actually materialize the idea in some tangible form. I can see the same here with Lubor's Lens. It is very easy to go back and argue that this and that is similar, but from what I see it is totally novel in the way he uses lenticular lens systems, at least with relation to the use in autostereoscopy.

I have to refer you to my repeated statements the Lubor did have a significant invention element to this, that no one else had used this specific technology in the same way before, etc he found an unusual way to utilise existing technology and principles to make a new magic trick idea and again would refer you to the cola analogy I made. Yes lubor invented coca-cola; but he did it using off-the-shelf ingredients to make a product that (but for tiny technical details) is indistinguishable from many other colas that other people had invented before or since. It is therefor not right to assume that lubor invented the whole concept of cola nor claim that any other cola is copied from Lubor.

I can't stress enough what a creative and inventive genius he was but it's also wrong to credit him (and this discredit other great inventors) with things he didn't do.

Let me put it another way. Going from lenticular autostereoscopy to the Lubor lens type of vanish was an act of invention that required a highly creative mind. Clearly a spark of genius was necessary to make that leap and realize for what it could be used. Going from the Lubor lens to the clear table by CS illusion is a rather small step of taking the exact same method and simply increasing it in size and adding a few things on the periphery. Your cola analogy doesn't work for me, because the mechanism of the vanish/hiding is totally different. If you want to stay at the beverage analogy and autostereoscopy is cola then the Lubor Lens is beer - different method, different outcome, but they both use a lot of water.

Again I refer you to my previous comment that it is clear the CS table was influenced by Lubor and their lack of up-front crediting is a little odd (this from someone who usually releases a 300+word summary of the influences and incorporated technologies of everything I "invent") and which is only going to cause confusion and negative comments.

The broader point though is that Lubor exploited an existing technology and refined it; he didn't invent the core technology (or materials) but simply used them differently to the normal application. Because of that the raw materials CS will have used to make this table won't be some fantastical new product they had to have hand crafted with lasers by Tibetan monks from unicorn horn but rather they will have been able to purchase a /relatively/ off the shelf product from an existing manufacturer who will be making tonnes of it for its more common use, tweak the specification of it slightly (quite possibly copying Lubor's evolution process) and use it for the key element of this trick. Ethically they are in a huge grey area but legally they are ok - even if the patent was still valid and active I think legally they would be ok as the LF patent very specifically relates to minor tweaks to the use of prior common principles in a handful of specific ways which could be easily quashed if challenged, none of which the CS table directly treads on.

Again, for the avoidance of doubt LF was a great out-there thinker and inventor & CS have clearly been heavily inspired by him and are operating in a grey area where ethics and legality clash; but lets make sure we are crediting the right innovation and inventions to people rather than diminishing the work of other inventors and innovator by miscrediting their work.

Look at the optics in Lubor's patent application -what is concealed (figures 3a, 3b) , how a point is spread (figure 6), and how the device exploits the background to effect concealment (figure 12) . Why so much discussion about someone using the material in mid-scale rather than in small scale (fingers background) or large scale (stage striped background)?

Tom Moore wrote:The broader point though is that Lubor exploited an existing technology and refined it;

I think our disagreement is exactly the word 'refined'. In my opinion Lubor didn't refine anything. He used an existing product in completely new and novel ways. That is the invention. Lenses go back hundreds of years. The lenticular lens system dates back to the early 20th century. Nobody is arguing that Fiedler invented the lenticular lens system. But he used it in a way that was completely novel. He should be credited for that. The clear table uses exactly the same vanishing mechanism and should therefore credit Lubor. It is not a legal issue. It is an ethical issue. I hope the CS guys will correct it.

There's a design matter (use this optical material in this way to make this happen) which pretty much amounts to "method". There's more than "credit" going on here since they table guys are not publishing an article in a magazine about their table design. They are making and selling a product.

Hi Chris and Tom,I have a simple question for you: Do you have see the Cs illusions "new table" at work and how it work? If no I can show you a video privately.It's exactly the Fidler Tenyo 4D surprise system it's exactly that one not a different system.They just did it bigger I don't see any differences.For me it's only unbelivable .....ThanksFabricemagic

Fabrice - Yes i have seen the table; you need to read my answers more carefully as i am talking about the law and design aspects of this table & other technologies that invented BEFORE Lubor's invention. The Table isn't EXACTLY the same as the tenyo prop because that requires the striped backdrop whereas the table does not; this means they are using a slightly different technology though as i have already said that ethically it is much more complicated & they have made a decision that I would not.

Tom Moore wrote: The Table isn't EXACTLY the same as the tenyo prop because that requires the striped backdrop whereas the table does not;

If you look at the demo video, the way the tablecloths behind the illusion are arranged is functionally equivalent to the striped background of the Tenyo trick. Strictly speaking, the stripes may not be necessary, but they certainly enhance the effectiveness, and the inventors are aware of that and take advantage of it.

Bill - I'm fully aware of the tablecloth and how they used it in the demo video. I can also say as someone familiar with the technology (though not in any way connected with this table) that whilst it is helping in their demo video it isn't required in the same way as the stripey backdrop is in 4D surprise. The table could be used on many different sized stages with different distances to backdrops and still (at least on a technical level) work the optical illusion correctly. If you watch performances of 4D surprise you will see that in the phase of the routine where the backdrop is removed the "clear" sections don't allow a clear view of the world behind but actually become more frosted - they are using a /slightly/ different material to tenyo and using some /slightly/ different angles and principles although clearly very heavily inspired by Lubor's creation.

Well Tom,The Fiedler /Tenyo 4D surprise don't need always the strips background ,I use that system (also myself I was playng a bit whit that principle in a bigger size) and I don't use any stripper backdrop but a classic one color backdrop and it work at the same,Tom I think there are nothing more to say than :Shame on Cs illusions ,What Cs illusion is doing it's unethic 100x100Thanks

To me, the innovation that makes the CS Table and 4D Surprise "work" is the recognition that linear objects are visible when viewed under a lenticular screen oriented one way, and invisible after the screen is rotated 90 degrees. We are all crediting Fiedler with that innovation (reasonably so, since he is listed as the inventor on the patent), but when Danny Orleans reviewed Paul Harris' Reality Twister (which uses Lubor's Lens) in Genii in Mar 2003, he states "Mr. Harris noticed that when the object is held perpendicular to the fingers, the fingers are still quite visible, while the object's midsection is invisible." So perhaps the innovation goes to Paul Harris?

Fabrice -- So far, I've only seen the CS web page and the youtube demo. It's never occurred to me that advertisements and demos should fully credit predecessor works, only the finished product or perhaps books or blueprints that describe it.

Are you saying that CS is unethical because their advertisements don't credit Fiedler? Most advertisements of magic tricks don't do that.

Bill to me their are unethical mostly for 2 reasons:1-The Fieldler/now Tenyo own few the patents about that system used in that way,2- that table(Cs) it's just a bigger 4D surprise and actually still protected by Tenyo.On their ad some one used words like : genius , innovative etc.etc. talking about their table....but here the one who was a genius and innovative and more was Lubor.... Guys,If someone will build a bigger Steinmeyer 's op Art Illusion using 2 persons that will be an innovation?Or a bigger Steinmeyer's pole levi for multiple persons?No at all.. and Cs for me are also hardly unethical even if the Lubor' ideas are under patents or not.I'm very curious to hear what Cs illusion have to say about this story.Thanks.

After watching the video and seeing them 'load the item' my first thought was, for that much money why is there only a pitiful manual load chamber, the use of which completely defeats the purpose of the table?